Archive overview:

This archive contains all the data archived from Animal Crossing: New Leaf's Dream Suite, which was archived by the Pretendo Network team. This archive contains data taken from several different archival sessions that downloaded data from Nintendo's servers starting in early January 2024 up until close to the shutdown in April 2024.

Once ready, the data from this archive will be available in a viewable format on the Pretendo Network website. At that time this archive will be updated to have a link to said website.

Nintendo uses a custom protocol known as DataStore to manage user-generated content for games on the 3DS, Wii U, and some Switch games. This protocol stores raw user content (known as "objects"), along with certain metadata about the content, such as its access rights, game-specific rating systems, download statistics, etc.

This archive contains the raw DataStore data, and associated metadata, of 239,105 objects used for Dream Suite in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. This data is not usable as-is in the game and is only useful either when converted into a New Leaf save file or used in a NEX server running the DataStore protocol.

The archive comes with two files:

1. objects.tar - 111.4 GB. This file contains all the raw object data for each item from DataStore. Each file is named using the pattern DataID_vVersion.bin. The DataID uniquely identifies a specific object. The Version represents a specific version of that object. Not all objects will have more than one version, and only the latest version of an object is provided by the game server. Therefore, some objects may only appear once, and some may seem to skip versions due to new versions being uploaded after previous sessions. This file is not compressed, as compressing it yields next to no size gain.
2. datastore.sqlite - 90.7 MB.This file contains all the metadata for each object. Contains a row for every version of each object.

Attempting to view the contents of objects.tar or attempting to directly download an individual file from the archive via archive.org will throw a 504 HTTP error. If you wish to download an individual file download it via https://r2-acnl-public.pretendo.network/objects/DataID_vVersion.bin

Object data overview:

The layout of the object files is not currently known. The first 16 bytes appear to be some form of header, the final 4 bytes of which are always all null. The remaining data is likely raw town data, either compressed or encrypted in some way.

Database overview:

Each table in the database is designed to emulate a portion of the DataStore protocol and relevant object metadata. Columns may exist even if that data is not used by Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Objects in DataStore may have their contents updated periodically, incrementing an internal version number. Game servers only provide data for the latest version, deleting older data when the object is updated. However, this database may contain data for multiple versions of the same object due to the archive being made using multiple dumps. When used in a game server, the objects DataID uniquely identifies it, however in this database a combination of DataID and Version is used as unique identifiers.

"objects" table:

The "objects" table contains general metadata about each DataStore object. All other tables either supplement or build off of the data found in this table.

CREATE TABLE "objects" (
	data_id                INT,  -- The unique ID for this object. This is always globally unique in game officially, though multiple rows in this database may have the same data_id
	version                INT,  -- The object version
	owner_id               INT,  -- The principal ID (PID) of the player who uploaded the object
	size                   INT,  -- The size of the object file as stored in the file server
	name                   TEXT, -- The name given to the object by the game/uploader
	data_type              INT,  -- The game-specific type of this object. Games may handle objects of different types differently
	meta_binary           ,      -- Optional raw binary data. Used to store extra metadata about the object the game can use at runtime
	access_permission      INT,  -- The permission level set to be able to access the objects data
	update_permission      INT,  -- The permission level set to be able to update the objects data
	create_time_original   INT,  -- The timestamp of when the object was created. Uses Nintendo's custom timestamp format
	create_time_standard   TEXT, -- The timestamp of when the object was created. Uses YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM::SS format
	update_time_original   INT,  -- The timestamp of when the object was last updated. Uses Nintendo's custom timestamp format
	update_time_standard   TEXT, -- The timestamp of when the object was last updated. Uses YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM::SS format
	period                 INT,  -- The number of days the object would be uploaded for. Each access of the object increased the expiration time by this many days
	status                 INT,  -- Object status. Used to control access to the object after upload
	referred_count         INT,  -- The number of times the object was accessed
	refer_data_id          INT,  -- An associated object DataID
	flag                   INT,  -- Flags telling the game server how to manage the object
	referred_time_original INT,  -- The timestamp of when the object was last accessed. Uses Nintendo's custom timestamp format
	referred_time_standard TEXT, -- The timestamp of when the object was last accessed. Uses YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM::SS format
	expire_time_original   INT,  -- The timestamp of when the object was set to be automatically deleted. Uses Nintendo's custom timestamp format
	expire_time_standard   TEXT  -- The timestamp of when the object was set to be automatically deleted. Uses YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM::SS format
)

"tags" table:

The "tags" table contains all the tags used for each DataStore object. Tags are used to look up groups of related objects. Due to limitations with SQLite not supporting arrays of data, these tags are stored in their own table.

Only some tags currently have known meanings:

• All tags prefixed with L represent the name of the town.
• All tags prefixed with P represent the names of villagers in the town, including the name of the uploader.
• All tags prefixed with UL_C seem to represent a country ID.
• All tags prefixed with UL_A seem to represent an area ID inside a country.
• All tags prefixed with DL_C seem to represent a country ID.
• All tags prefixed with DL_A seem to represent an area ID inside a country.
• It is not known how the UL_ tags differ from the DL_ tags. Some objects have only either UL_ or DL_, some have both. Possibly dealing with uploads vs. downloads? It may also be region differences, as searching for towns on a USA copy of the game uses the DL_ tag to filter.
• There are several other tags, with prefixes such as N, V and R. These tags have unknown meanings at this time.

CREATE TABLE "tags" (
	data_id   INT, -- The DataID the tag is for
	version   INT, -- The object version
	tag       TEXT -- Tag string
)

"ratings" table:

The "ratings" table contains information about the ratings for each DataStore object. Objects in DataStore may have "ratings", a score given to the object that has game-specific meanings. An object can have multiple ratings, each with a different purpose. Each rating is tracked separately and referenced using a "slot" number.

The meanings of the ratings in Animal Crossing: New Leaf are currently unknown.

CREATE TABLE "ratings" (
	data_id        INT, -- The DataID the rating is for
	version        INT, -- The object version
	slot           INT, -- The rating slot number
	total_value    INT, -- The total value of all ratings for this object in this slot
	count          INT, -- The total number of individual ratings given for this object in this slot
	initial_value  INT  -- The ratings initial value for this slot when the object was uploaded
)

"access_recipients" table:

The "access_recipients" table contains information about who can access each DataStore object. Objects in DataStore may opt to restrict access to themselves. Certain permission levels restrict access to either specific users, or specific friends of the owner. The principal IDs (PIDs) of these users are stored in this table. Due to limitations with SQLite not supporting arrays of data, these PIDs are stored in their own table.

Unused in Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

CREATE TABLE "access_recipients" (
	data_id      INTEGER, -- The DataID the recipient is for
	version      INTEGER, -- The object version
	pid          INTEGER, -- The principal ID (PID) of the player allowed to access the object
UNIQUE (data_id, version, pid),
FOREIGN KEY (data_id) REFERENCES objects(data_id)
)

"update_recipients" table:

The "update_recipients" table contains information about who can update each DataStore object. Objects in DataStore may opt to restrict access to themselves. Certain permission levels restrict who can update the object (both object data and metadata) to either specific users, or specific friends of the owner. The principal IDs (PIDs) of these users are stored in this table. Due to limitations with SQLite not supporting arrays of data, these PIDs are stored in their own table.

Unused in Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

CREATE TABLE "update_recipients" (
	data_id      INTEGER, -- The DataID the recipient is for
	version      INTEGER, -- The object version
	pid          INTEGER, -- The principal ID (PID) of the player allowed to update the object
UNIQUE (data_id, version, pid),
FOREIGN KEY (data_id) REFERENCES objects(data_id)
)

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